A CHRISTMAS PRAYER by Kimberla Lawson Roby

A CHRISTMAS PRAYER by Kimberla Lawson Roby

Alexis Fletcher hasn't had a merry Christmas in five years-not since her
mother passed away. Every December she remembers the joy her mother
brought to everyone during the holiday season and feels the pain of her
absence, even more so now that she and her sister are barely speaking.
More than anything, Alexis wishes her family could be whole again.

However, with her wedding fast approaching, Alexis might just be ready
to make some holiday memories with a new family of her own. Alexis's
fiancé, Chase Dupont, is everything she ever dreamed of. He's kind,
handsome, fully supportive of Alexis's career, and the CEO of a large
company. But outside forces threaten to derail this happy couple from
ever reaching the altar.

As tensions rise, a dramatic event causes Alexis to question everything.
Will fate give her what she needs to finally embrace the season that
has brought her so much pain? Will Alexis get her wish for a happy
holiday? Or will her Christmas prayer go unanswered?

Chapter 1 - A Christmas Prayer

It was Black Friday, and while millions of folks were out chasing some
of the most colossal deals of the century, all Alexis wanted was for
this whole Christmas season to be over with. There were times when she
wished she could feel differently, but ever since her mom had passed
away five years ago, she hadn’t wanted anything to do with it. Of
course, she did still recognize and mentally rejoice at the beautiful
birth of Christ, but when it came to huge family celebrations and
festive gatherings, she wanted no parts of them. What she did instead,
mostly, was pray that New Year’s Day would come as quickly as possible
so she could get on with her life.

Alexis curled her body into a tighter ball, picked up the remote
control, and looked toward the flat-screen television on her bedroom
wall. It was shortly past one in the afternoon, yet she still lay in her
dark mahogany sleigh-style bed with her pajamas on. She just didn’t
feel like doing anything, and the fact that almost every news
channel she turned to showed massive shopping crowds and footage of
customers and workers being trampled, well, that made Alexis want to
turn off the TV altogether. As it was, she had already been trying her
best to avoid every one of those sappy Hallmark Christmas card
commercials, and she’d certainly been staying clear of one of her
personal favorites—the Hallmark Channel itself, since they were doing
what they did every year: airing those depressing Christmas movies day
in and day out, twenty-four seven .

If only her mom were still here, Alexis would be so much happier. Even
now, she couldn’t help thinking about how much her mom had loved, loved,
loved Christmas. It had been by far her favorite holiday, and she’d
adored it so much that she would immediately begin decorating the day
after Thanksgiving. She would celebrate in various other ways, too, the
entire month of December, including playing some of her favorite
Christmas carols, such as “Silent Night,” “Away in a Manger,” and “The
First Noel.” Then, on the twenty-fifth, she would host a huge family
dinner. She bought gifts for everyone, she baked and cooked and baked
and cooked some more, and on Christmas afternoon, she would say, “I
almost hate to see the sun go down, because Christmas will be just about
over.”

This was how it had always been, and it was because of these kinds of
sentiments that Alexis was full of happy childhood memories. She even
had fond memories from her adult life…that is, until her mom had passed.
Now her heart was consumed only with sadness.

Alexis flipped through more channels, sighing heavily. But then she came
upon one of her favorite movies, This Christmas, starring Loretta
Devine, Regina King, and Idris Elba. She could tell the movie had been
on for a while because Chris Brown was already walking toward the front
of the church, preparing to sing…“This Christmas.” Alexis watched and
listened, though she wasn’t sure why she tortured herself this way,
because not once had she ever watched this scene without breaking into
tears. It was such a reminder of her mom and the way she had loved and
doted on her family. It also reminded Alexis of how her mom had taught
her children exceedingly strong Christian values. She’d raised Alexis
and her younger sister, Sabrina, to treat all people the way they wanted
to be treated and to keep God and family first in their lives. The two
of them had been very blessed to have such a loving, caring, and
compassionate mother—and it meant everything.

Alexis watched Chris Brown singing from the depths of his soul and then
saw family members standing and walking into the church aisle, embracing
one another. It was after this that Alexis’s eyes welled up with tears,
and she cried uncontrollably. She missed her mother so tremendously
that her chest ached. Then, to make matters worse, the next scene
showcased the entire family gathered around the dinner table. They
looked as though they couldn’t be happier, and Alexis couldn’t help
thinking how this was the way she’d once felt, too.

But as the saying went, that was then and this was now. Her mother was
gone, and as far as Alexis was concerned, there wasn’t a single thing or
person that could make her feel better about it, not even the people
Alexis loved. Paula, her best friend since childhood, had been trying to
lift her Christmas spirit for years, and so had Alexis’s fiancé, Chase,
for the time he’d known her. But if anything, Alexis seemed to feel
sadder with each passing year. In fact, this year she’d begun dreading
the whole idea of Christmas as early as September. She wasn’t sure what
had set her off, exactly; all she knew was that not long after Labor
Day, the thought of Christmas had entered her mind and she’d become
depressed. It was as if the simplest anticipation of it all had been
enough to ruin Alexis’s day, which was the reason she’d taken that
particular afternoon off. This hadn’t been hard to do, since she was
self-employed as a motivational speaker and her hours were flexible, but
she still hated that mere thoughts of Christmas affected her so
gravely.

It also didn’t help that she and her sister, Sabrina, were usually at
odds about one thing or another. Alexis and Sabrina had never gotten
along the way sisters should. They were just too different, she guessed.
But at least when their mom had been alive, they’d worked harder at it
and tolerated each other more. Now, Alexis practically had to beg to see
her niece, Courtney, and there were times when Sabrina still told her
no just to be spiteful. The two of them had a lot of bad history, but
that was a whole other story and one Alexis didn’t want to think about
because it was far too distressing.

As one thought after another raced through her mind, Alexis wept like a
child. She was miserable, and she wished she could sleep for the next
week. She knew this wasn’t logical, but she just wanted this awful pain
to go away. She wanted to be at peace, and before long, she glanced over
at the bottle of amitriptyline on her wooden nightstand. Her doctor had
prescribed it for insomnia, and although she only took one
ten-milligram pill at bedtime, and sometimes only half a pill, she
contemplated taking much more. Or maybe all she needed to do was take
two of them, because she knew one woman who took twenty-five milligrams
for unexplained abdominal pain and another who took more than that for
depression. If Alexis only took twenty milligrams, she wouldn’t be
overdoing it, and she also wouldn’t likely wake up until many hours from
now—meaning she wouldn’t have to think about the loss of her mom or
anything relating to family or Christmas. She would simply be able to
sleep away her sadness, and by tomorrow, Black Friday and all the hoopla
surrounding it would be over. She was sure the media would continue
covering all the shopping stories throughout the weekend as well as on
Cyber Monday, but at least the biggest shopping day of the year would
have ended, and she’d be one day closer to January 1.

All she had to do was bide her time, and things would return to normal.
They had to, because after all, she and Chase were getting married in
June, and the last thing she wanted was to be an unhappy bride. She was
engaged to the man of her dreams, and she looked forward to becoming
Mrs. Chase Dupont III. This was what she kept telling herself,
anyway—especially since her future mother-in-law was the most heartless
woman she’d ever met. Still, what woman in her right mind wouldn’t be
thrilled about marrying a man like Chase? He was gorgeous, well
educated, and CEO of a Fortune 500 company called Borg-Freeman
Technologies—which, interestingly enough, was the same position his
father had held for years before his passing. He’d also placed a
five-karat ring on her finger, and he truly loved her. By most people’s
standards, Chase was everything a woman could hope for, so Alexis tried
to remember that.

But for now, she reached over and picked up her pill bottle, opened it,
swallowed two pills with water, and lay back down. She closed her eyes
and smiled. In a few moments, she’d be sound asleep and wouldn’t have to
think about Christmas at all…and she certainly wouldn’t have to think
about Chase’s mother—or the disastrous time she’d had with them
yesterday during Thanksgiving dinner. She wouldn’t have a problem in the
world, and just knowing that made her feel better already.

Meet Kimberla Lawson Roby
New York Times Bestselling Author Kimberla Lawson Roby has published 20
novels which include THE PRODIGAL SON, A HOUSE DIVIDED, THE PERFECT
MARRIAGE, THE REVEREND’S WIFE, SECRET OBSESSION, LOVE, HONOR, and
BETRAY, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR, A DEEP DARK SECRET, THE BEST OF
EVERYTHING, ONE IN A MILLION, SIN NO MORE, LOVE & LIES, CHANGING
FACES, THE BEST-KEPT SECRET, TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING, A TASTE OF
REALITY, IT’S A THIN LINE, CASTING THE FIRST STONE, HERE AND NOW, and
her debut title, BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, which was originally
self-published through her own company, Lenox Press.

Kimberla Lawson Roby has sold more than 2,000,000 copies of her novels,
and they have frequented numerous bestseller lists, including The New
York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Essence
Magazine, Upscale Magazine, Emerge Magazine, Barnes and Noble,
Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, The Dallas Morning News, and The Austin Chronicle
to name a few, and both BEHIND CLOSED DOORS and CASTING THE FIRST STONE
were #1 Blackboard bestsellers for four consecutive months in both 1997
and 2000. BEHIND CLOSED DOORS was the #1 Blackboard Best-selling book
for paperback fiction in 1997.

Kimberla is a 2013 NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Literary
Work – Fiction, the recipient of the 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011 and
2013 Author of the Year – Female award presented by the African-American
Literary Award Show in New York, the recipient of the 2014 Literary
Excellence Award from Black Pearls Magazine, the recipient of the 2014
AAMBC Award for Female Author of the Year, the recipient of the
Blackboard Fiction Book of the Year Award in 2001 for CASTING THE FIRST
STONE, the recipient of the 1998 First-Time Author Award from Chicago’s
Black History Month Book Fair and Conference, and in 2001, Kimberla was
inducted into the Rock Valley College Alumni Hall of Fame (Rockford,
IL).

Each of Kimberla’s novels deal with very real issues, including
corruption within the church, drug addiction, gambling addiction,
infidelity, social status, single motherhood, infertility, sibling
rivalry and jealousy, domestic violence, sexual abuse, mental illness,
care-giving of a parent, racial and gender discrimination in the
workplace, sexual harassment, and overweight issues to name a few.

Kimberla resides in Illinois with her husband, Will. Her 21st title, A CHRISTMAS PRAYER will release on October 28, 2014.